HSC Workshop Series

Intended for Executive Directors, Senior Leaders, or other high level leaders in significant decision making roles of not-for-profit or governmental organizations.

Staff, board members, or volunteers, are welcome to attend the evening session.

Are you and your staff exhausted, overwhelmed, feeling like you have lost the guiding force of your values when it comes to serving the community? If so, you are not alone! Human service leaders and staff are facing increased pressures to make impossible choices, are unable to serve the most vulnerable in our community due to imposed policies and funding, or “playing nice” with systems that are harming the communities you serve. Many describe the impacts they are experiencing as burnout when in reality the underlying cause may actually be Moral Injury.

“Moral injury is the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct.” (The Moral Injury Project)

Join this leadership specific orienting session to When the Work Hurts. This session is designed to facilitate leaders through creating structural supports for managing and responding to moral injuries as people and as those responsible for others. Silence, blame, or ignoring the conditions causing moral injury does not stop or heal it. However, building an action-oriented, values-driven community does. Come ready to learn, to share, and practice replicable actions that put us in closer connection and commitment to one another for the long haul.

About the Presenter:
Johnanna Ganz, Ph.D., (name/they) is a systems-thinking, data-focused pragmatist who looks for opportunities to turn theory and ideas into action. As the founder of J. Ganz Consulting, LLC, Johnanna’s passion lies in increasing the sustainability of mission-driven agencies and their people through skills-based education and coaching. In their doctoral research, Johnanna studied occupational and organizational identity development in victim advocates and their agencies using quantitative and qualitative approaches. Since then, Johnanna has used this research to develop tools and trainings to work in deep collaboration with mission-driven staff and leaders as they build their knowledge and skills around sustainable occupational identity management and practices of liberatory organizational cultures. Johnanna approaches every project and relationship with the philosophy of, “Let’s do better, together.”

Dr. Ganz has served in a variety of mission-driven roles, particularly focused on ending gendered violence in local, state, territory, and national communities. Some of Johnanna’s prior roles include adjunct professor of Sociology and Women’s/Gender Studies, Domestic Violence Victim Advocate, Sexual Assault Response Team Leader, 3 Systems Change Program Manager, Rural Projects Coordinator for a national training and technical assistance provider, and the Sexual Violence Justice Institute Director. Johnanna has also had the privilege of serving as a grant reviewer for the Office on Violence Against Women (2020-2024), an adjunct faculty of Hamline University in the Social Change and Social Justice Department (Fall 2022), a member of the Board of Directors for the Minnesota Alliance on Crime (2021-2022), and the Advocacy Policy Subcommittee Chair for the National Taskforce on Advocate Wellness (2023-present).

Light morning refreshments will be on offer and lunch will be provided – choose your sandwich option while paying for your registration. Lunch is a box including a medium sandwich, chips, a bottle of water, and a cookie.

This event is in-person only.

Masks are optional at in-person events.

Any requests for needed accommodations to fully participate must be made by 10/12/26.

All registration sales are final.

Thank you to the Health Foundation of Western & Central NY and to the Park Foundation in Ithaca for their financial support allowing us to provide this critical program with minimal cost to those in our community.

This opportunity is offered as part of the IMPACT Capacity Building Program of HSC.

Ask most people where they want their career to go, and they can tell you. Ask what they’re doing this month to get there, and the answer is often a pause. Not because they don’t care, but because we’ve come to expect that growth is handed to us: by a manager, a program, a promotion. Meanwhile, most of the learning that shapes a career happens in everyday work, but only if we treat it that way.

This hands-on workshop is about taking the lead on your own growth: knowing what you’re working toward, understanding how you learn best, practicing what you’re not yet good at, and finding the people who will support and challenge you. We’ll look honestly at what gets in the way, including the real constraints (no time, no budget, short staffing, and the sense that personal and professional development is one more unpaid task on an already too full plate) and the discomfort of being a beginner again.

Bring a real starting point: a skill you want to build, a place you feel stuck, or an honest objection. “My manager doesn’t give me the time to do this” is welcome. So is “Why won’t my people take initiative?” We’ll work with whatever you bring

You’ll walk out with:

• A learning plan of your own, built mostly from work you already do, so it doesn’t depend on extra time or budget
• A first step small enough to start the next working day
• The words to bring your plan to your manager and ask for their support, practiced in the room

For supervisors: a one-page guide to supporting initiative on your team

If you’re not in a supervisory role: you’ll see why owning your development pays off well beyond your current job or organization. And how it can work even with real constraints (time, money etc.).

If you supervise or lead others: you’ll do the same work for yourself, since a team’s appetite for growth rarely exceeds its leader’s. You’ll also hear directly what gets in the way for staff, and practice being on the receiving end of a development ask.

Expect to participate. This is not a lecture

About the Presenter
Sue Mann is an executive coach, award-winning trainer and facilitator, founder of Sansu Rising and CEO of QinaWorks. Her 30-year career has been defined by high-stakes situations and turnarounds. As the first woman to lead a South African diplomatic mission in the Middle East, she took the mission to a top-five ranking among 92 missions worldwide while keeping staff safe in a conflict zone. She has turned around failing operations and set up the project management office for a first-of-its-kind smart grid project.

Sue has changed careers more than once, from diplomacy to the energy sector to coaching, so she knows what it takes to build your next chapter when no one is handing it to you. Today she coaches leaders and teams through transitions, conflict, resilience and difficult working relationships. She is co-creator of the Confident Manager Masterclass, winner of the 2025 CNY BEST Talent Development Award from the Central New York Chapter of the Association for Talent Development.

Sue is a visiting lecturer at Cornell University, where she earned her MBA and MMH, and faculty for the American Management Association. She is Certified Executive Coach.

This event is in person only and will not be recorded.

Masks are optional at in person events.

All registration sales are final.